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Participating Frequently
October 22, 2021
Question

Change Media Replacement essential property source using expressions

  • October 22, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 259 views

You can change the source for a Media Replacement essential property using expressions? Similar to how 

setAlternateSource() works using scripting?
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3 replies

Mylenium
Legend
October 22, 2021

Nope. As far as this is concerned, you are merely dealing with "layers" in the most abstract sense. The feature in its current form cannot deep-check any dependencies in pre-comp based layers, hence it has no way of knowing whether they are actually imported footage or internally generated. You really have to place this in the root level comp. For recurring access to the ever same footage layers of course the old tricks of setting up time-remapped stacks or toggling opacity based on index sliders would be possible, but the footage (or suitable placeholders) would always have to already exist in the project.

 

Mylenium

Mylenium
Legend
October 22, 2021

No and no. Expressions cannot change any layers or source items in the first place due to how they evaluate. Whatever you have in mind requires a completely different approach, but of course without any idea what you are actually trying to achieve we can't advise.

 

Mylenium

Participating Frequently
October 22, 2021

My main goal is that I want to be able to change the essential property value (media replacement) from the parent comp of a multi nested comp.

So like this:

Comp 1 > Comp 2 > Comp 3 (which has media replacement essential property)

I want to expose the media replacement essential prop thats on comp 3 all the way out to Comp 1.

 

I have been able to do it with text but just not media replacement stuff. 

 

Mathias Moehl
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2021

If you need the footage in multiple comps, you can put the footage into a precomp and then use the precomp instead of the actual footage layer in all other comps of your project, right? If you replace the media inside the precomp, it will update in all comps which use this precomp, too.

Mathias Möhl - Developer of tools like BeatEdit and Automation Blocks for Premiere Pro and After Effects
Participating Frequently
October 22, 2021

Sorry, meant "CAN YOU..."?